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Red Steel 2 Blames You For Low Sales

One thing you hear over and over again is that the Wii is a waggle-laden fad, and real gamers prefer the precise input of a analog controller to wild arm flailing. Nobody ever considered that we might be at fault instead of the controller, though. At least, this is what Ubisoft Creative Director Jason VandenBerghe claims, saying that the testing phase of Red Steel 2 resulted in “absolute random chaos.” Testers couldn’t figure out how to use the Wii Motion Plus properly, and often resorted to uncoordinated thrashing in order to get the job done. One thing the Ubisoft team behind Red Steel 2 realized is that motion controls were boundless in their potential, limited only by the player utilizing the controllers.

Another factor that contributed to Red Steel 2’s lackluster performance is something VandenBerghe dubbed “audience willingness”, or the motivation to actually get up and move around when playing video games. VandenBerghe claims that no more than “20 percent” of people are going to get up off the couch and move, something that he thinks hindered Red Steel 2’s marketing appeal. Once motion control supplants analog as the main source of input for video games, “audience willingness” will go up, and games like Red Steel 2 will be better received.

Right now I’m wondering what you guys think about Mr. VandenBerghe’s statements. A lot of it seems to place the impetus on gamers to pick up the subtle nuances of game mechanics, something the developers should be attempting to do through in-game tutorials. While VandenBerghe did mention that the design team solved this problem during testing, it seemed to be too little too late. Though Red Steel 2 had decent reviews, it just hasn’t sold that well, barely passing 270,000 copies worldwide. Are we as gamers at fault for the game’s poor performance, or does it lie with the developers and the publishers to ensure that a fun experience is had by all regardless of whether or not they “understand” the controls? Tell us what you think!

6 thoughts on “Red Steel 2 Blames You For Low Sales”

This is definitely interesting, and, if true, makes me wonder about the success of something like Kinect, which demands players get up and actually do a lot more moving around than other more traditional motion control peripherals. It almost might be due to the fact that Red Steel or Red Steel 2 weren’t all that great? I’ve never played the games, so I’m not making a call on that, but I think we’d need to see this trend continue in order to believe it. I mean, some of the hugest sellers are the Wii Sports franchise, so that seems to contradict what he’s saying.

I think he’s absolutely correct. The first Red Steel was not a good game, but Red Steel 2 got good to great reviews so it’s not like the game wasn’t worth playing. I think it falls in line with the trend of non-“casual” wii games selling poorly despite good critical reception.

In my opinion, “hardcore” gamers are a stubbornly conservative lot in terms of what they’ll accept from a game. For example, on one of this site’s own podcasts, someone (don’t remember who) stated that he refused to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 because it required him to shake the controller to perform one specific move. I’m sorry, but that sounds like an incredibly petty excuse for not playing a game.

I’ve gotten myself in trouble defending motion controls too forcefully on here before, but I really do not understand the hatred many gamers have for the wii controller. I’ve been playing games since controllers had one button; change happens. I’ve never found the wii controller to be uncomfortable or otherwise problematic. Sure, some games don’t implement it well, but I’ve played a lot of games that can’t seem to utilize a conventional controller properly also.

I don’t think the success of wii Sports Resort contradicts what they’re saying because the games are aimed at a different audience. Almost every game on the wii that has aimed to capture the “hardcore” audience has failed miserably. When Metroid: Other M continues the trend this fall (because if you think that game is going to sell well, you’re crazy), it should finally be obvious to everyone that “hardcore” gamers don’t care about the wii and have never cared about it because it doesn’t conform to what they’ve come to expect from a video game console.

I didn’t even realize it had been released, which might point to another issue – poor publicity. Or maybe I’m just oblivious. At any rate, having never even touched the first, its incredibly poor reception would definitely lead me to avoid anything but an utterly earth-shattering sequel.